Kosovo: EU police arrest 4 Serb war crime suspects

PRISTINA, Kosovo 
Four Serbs were arrested Wednesday under suspicion of committing war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, EU police said.

NATO peacekeepers and Kosovo police also took part in the arrests in eastern Kosovo, said Karin Limdal, spokesman for the EU's 2,000-strong police and justice mission in Kosovo.

Limdal said the charges relate to "alleged inhuman treatment, violation of bodily integrity or health, intimidation and terror, and illegal arrest and detention." The three men and one woman were not identified.

The crimes were allegedly committed in April 1999 during NATO's 78-day airstrikes on Serb forces that halted the war.

A fifth person also was arrested for allegedly obstructing the authorities during the arrests in the village of Novo Brdo, 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of the capital Pristina. Several dozen Serb villagers protested the police action.

About 10,000 people were killed during the Kosovo war as Serbia's forces cracked down on ethnic Albanian separatists, and more than 1,000 people remain missing.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia last year, but is still under loose international supervision while European Union police are in charge of sensitive cases such as war crimes.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague tried the late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for carrying out a campaign of murder, rape and deportations that forced nearly 800,000 ethnic Albanians to flee Kosovo before the NATO airstrikes. The court also has convicted five other senior former Serbian officials.

Two senior ethnic Albanian leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army were tried but were freed of the charges.

Local courts have focused on lower-level subordinates suspected of war crimes, but the process has faced difficulties due to challenges on gathering evidence and arresting the suspects.